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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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First of all, I do think this post is pretty much just "why is my idiotic outgroup so idiotic as to believe in idiotic things?" and not the kind of thing I like seeing here, personally.

Second, I think the things you describe about biology-denial is common not just in "wokes" but in much of the general population as well. The wokes certainly are the most fervent believers in it and also one of the primary driving forces that push it onto the general populace, but they're by far not the only ones to buy into the denialism hook-line-sinker.

Third, I think the answer to your question is just that most people don't actually care to do the research into this stuff. Most people, wokes included, follow a sort of cargo-cult version of principles that happen to be convenient for them in the moment, not principles themselves. An example that comes to mind - because it was one of the first I noticed back in my SJW days - was wokes (perhaps proto-wokes? "Woke" wasn't nearly as common a term back then as it is now, and they were usually called SJWs) calling opinions they disagreed with "gross" as a way to denigrate them. It came as a shock to me, because those same individuals had spent the past decade denigrating the notion of objecting to something on the basis of personal disgust in the fight for gay rights and gay marriage. Yet there they were, objecting to something on the basis of personal disgust. It made me realize that they mistakenly believed they were principled; it wasn't that they believed in the principle of non-judgment on the basis of disgust while their conservative opponents didn't, it was that they just didn't find gay marriage disgusting and so had no issue with using such a principle as a convenient momentary tool with which to beat down their conservative opponents.

So when it comes to science and specifically the evolution of the human brain and human societies, they don't actually follow the principles of science to do the research into figuring out truths about the universe, they just think cheering really loudly for the banner that says "science" on it while pushing all the same ideas they already believe in is what it takes for them to be pro-science.

I don't think this is unique to wokes. It's perhaps particularly worse in them than many other ideologies, because woke-ism specifically has concepts designed to turn off critical thinking. But then again, that's not exactly unique to woke-ism either. It just happens to be the one that is acceptable to people who consider themselves pro-science through optimizing itself to have the most convincing, shiniest pseudo-academic/pseudoscientific veneer that hides the fact that it's all made of cardboard.

It's perhaps particularly worse in them than many other ideologies, because woke-ism specifically has concepts designed to turn off critical thinking

What do you mean by this? Do you have any examples?

The concept of "lived experience" being that, when someone belonging to a demographic group that has been deemed oppressed claims something, it is to be believed without skepticism. Any sort of good-faith questioning or checking is deemed to be a form of oppression. This concept is repeated in many places, such as the "microaggression," which is, by definition, a behavior that the "microaggressor" doesn't perceive as being an aggression and is entirely up to the judgment of the "microaggressed upon" but which is still something that the potential "microaggressor" has the responsibility to avoid doing. There's also "believe women" and "believe all women," which are slogans designed specifically to push people away from applying basic good-faith skepticism to claims of fact when women make claims of specific sexual assault against individuals.

Of course, in practice it's impossible to apply this sort of thing in a consistent manner; if 2 different black people claim contradictory things to each other, then what do you do? In practice, it just means you have license to believe whoever is more convenient for your own social status and comfort while dismissing the other through various means (e.g. "internalized white supremacy"). And this sort of thing can lead to self-reinforcement, because by believing the right people, you can lead yourself to the conclusion that concepts like logical consistency and empirical science are themselves merely tools of the white supremacist patriarchy designed for the purpose of oppressing minorities; and it doesn't get much more anti-critical thinking than that.

There's also the attacking of free speech as a principle, the mockery of "Well Akshually", the attacking of "just asking questions" or playing devils advocate (you're derailing!). So there's a whole bunch of anti-heresy mechanisms in place.